We have /c/fuckcars but no /c/fuckplanes. Yet a lot of the same arguments apply. They cause air pollution (roughly double the amount per km traveled), noise pollution and they (airports) take up a lot of space near dense living areas. Sure, some places can practically only be visited by plane, just like some places can practically only be visited by car. But people don’t consider not having your holiday that far away or giving pushback on a busines trip that should have been an online meeting. Besides work-from-home being encouraged, work-from-home-country should be too.
Cars need to be discouraged in favor of busses, trams and trains. Planes nees to be discouraged in favor of high-speed trains, staycations and hopefully new alternatives like modern sailboats or electric planes.
Planes are similar to income inequality in that a (relatively) small percentage overwhelmingly use services wastefully
Almost 90% of the world’s population doesn’t fly at all in any given year. In the USA 12% of the population takes almost 70% of flights. In France 2% take 50%.
American Airlines report 87% of its customers fly 1 time per year which accounts for 50% of its income. The other 50% is accounted by the remaining 13%. There is a small contingency of the population that basically flies almost every single day
To put it more simply roughly 1% of people taking frequent flights account for about 50% of aviation emissions
Normal people should continue to be allowed to have their once every decade trip to change the endlessly drudgery of their working class lives for a week (even if much of that is not an actual vacation as much as stuff like visiting a home they’ve had to move far away from for employment). Once again blame the greedy selfish people that hedonistically overindulge at the expense of everyone around them.
If you want to get angry at an entire industry that is extremely destructive and genuinely has no point other than excess look at cruises. Just go to a fucking hotel/casino on land, 99% of the experience and like 5% (if that) of the emissions
Question is, would the airlines still be around if we suddenly cut that 50% of income from frequent fliers? 😅
Sure. They would just be smaller and perhaps fewer in number.
Would we be able to go to as many places? 😬
Probably not quite as many. And probably fewer flight options available.
If 50% of air passengers aren’t flying anymore, airlines would need to reduce all flights by about 50% to remain anywhere near profitable. And you’d want that. Because the environmental and efficiency gains would all evaporate if the airlines just keep flying half-empty planes at the same rate they do today.
Airlines are already barely profitable. Most of their income is not actually related to tickets sold.
https://youtu.be/ggUduBmvQ_4
Yes, half of the current market is still quite a market. It will be different, though.
While some of those 13% are hedonistic overindulgers, I’m guessing that a significant portion of them are people who have to travel frequently for work.
Of those who have to travel for work, some of them could probably reduce that air travel significantly if they used remote work instead, or conducted meetings by phone instead of in person, etc.
But there will be some remaining portion of people who travel for work who actually need to travel for work. Usually people who are highly specialized in something. Inspectors, investigators, researchers, technicians, scientists, musicians on tour, sports teams traveling to away games, aid workers traveling to impoverished countries, etc, etc, etc. People whose work needs to be done in person, at specific locations across a wide area, and can’t be easily replaced by local labor.
No idea at all what the actual percentage breakdown would be between those, but my point is not all of those 13% are doing it for selfish, wasteful reasons.